


An Air of Emptiness

by confettiinmyhair



Category: Ripper Street
Genre: Alcohol, Coitus Interruptus, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-08-07 06:37:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7704271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/confettiinmyhair/pseuds/confettiinmyhair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An interlude, interrupted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Air of Emptiness

Reid would unlock that top desk drawer, now and again, to stare at it. 

The grand bauble of a ring, all gold and garnets, with its mysterious, apparently-incriminating inscription.

He knew that no amount of questioning would draw any substantial truth on the matter from Jackson, no matter how he wished to hear it. 

No matter how much he simply wished to _understand_. 

But then, the man was welcome to his privacy, so long as it did not prove a hindrance - so long as it kept him from asking his own questions about Reid, stopped the insistent cajoling about the inscriptions on his own skin. 

Maddening privacy would simply have to suit. 

Reid realized that he was turning the ring over in his fingers. After a long hesitation, he slowly tipped his hand and let it fall to the bottom of the drawer with a heavy thud. 

**  

He could not, truly, begrudge Emily the urge she felt towards her charitable works. 

She was assuaging her own despair by giving her life over to the despair of others. 

In a different way, he supposed that he was doing the same. 

This didn’t mean that he didn't wish for some shred of their old lives. For maybe some tangible glimmer of Before, a single moment of how they had been. 

Perhaps he'd admit to himself, someday, that the hope of anything such was long past. 

Perhaps. 

His nights had taken a certain air of emptiness, when he made it home at all. 

Invariably, Emily would already be well abed, or she would be absent entirely, holding vigil at a hospital ward, or a shelter that she felt required her special attention. 

Either way, he'd become accustomed to the half-unholy dark stillness of the house at night; were he to be true, he was beginning to sleep more soundly on his cot at the station, with the vague murmur of action a constant, buffering aura in those same dark hours of the night. 

** 

He was neither of those places tonight. 

There was, perhaps, no love lost between Drake and Jackson, but they could agree on one thing: that certain shadier corners of the city were preferable to the brighter places when it came to swilling gin and stomping to a few rough shanties. 

Reid found he didn't care much in any case, and the men were good enough company when it came to losing his cares behind a haze of drink. Between Jackson's smug charm, Drake's obviously rough edges, and Reid's own ability to come across as entirely unremarkable, they could more or less be left in peace. 

It was well past midnight, and it was coming up on a well-earned day of rest (which never, in this line of work, actually seemed to come to bear). 

Reid had been content for some time to simply lean back in the sturdy wooden chair, his head rested back against a wooden column behind him, sipping at his glass as the other two men gave over to good-natured bickering. 

 

He must truly have lost track of the time, must truly have lost track of his glass being refilled. When next he tipped his head forward, he nearly lost control of the motion, nearly slammed face-first into the table. 

When he collected himself enough to properly look around, he realized that Drake was nowhere to be seen - or at least nowhere he could focus on clearly - and that Jackson was a fair few tables away, entrenched in what seemed to be a dice game.  

Figured. 

He propped a few pound notes under his glass, hoping to cover his share, and got less steadily than he'd hoped to his feet. 

He wavered over to Jackson, thinking to merely clap his hand on the man's shoulder by way of a goodbye. 

The touch may have lingered a moment more than he'd intended, sure, but what of it? 

He was reasonably certain that he knew his way back to the station house from here. 

 

The shouting didn't even register for him for at least a block, possibly further. It took him a few minutes more to hear the laughter in the noise, and to realize that it was directed towards him. 

He turned carefully, squinting, as though that would help him focus on the noise. 

It was Jackson, running after him, coat rather more askew than usual, hat in his hand. 

"It's not even two," the man huffed out, throwing his arm around Reid's shoulders and shoving a bottle into his hands. "Drake pays for us to keep drinking, and you just up and leave?" 

Reid stared at the uncorked bottle for a long moment. How long had he been lost in thought, that he'd ignored them both so completely? 

"Didn't realize," he muttered quietly, raising the bottle to swig as they walked. 

"Didn't realize," Jackson snorted, shoving his hat on, finally, at a somewhat odd angle. "And what is so pressing, Inspector, that you would up and walk off?" 

"As though you need my help gambling away your wages," Reid scoffed, as Jackson pulled the bottle back out of his hands. "Better to be drunk and alone in my own bed than drunk and alone in public, I should think." 

Jackson paused at that, pulling back to squint at him a little blearily. 

"Most men don't think so fondly of a cot under their desk, if I do say so." 

Not entirely sure how to respond, Reid snatched the bottle back, pulled out of Jackson's grasp, and moved towards one of the wider alleyways that he knew would more or less take him back in the direction of the station. 

He was choking down another gulp as Jackson apparently decided to follow. 

"What, did I hit a raw nerve? Come on, that bottle's as much mine as yours!" 

Reid slumped himself into a doorway, knowing the man would not let him be, come hell, high water, or the ground itself swallowing him whole. 

"Why am I not allowed to have my own secrets, when you seem to be nothing but?" he all but laughed out, as Jackson pulled the gin back away from him. 

"Would I be as necessary to you without them?" Jackson sniped back, and Reid scoffed once again. 

"Your medical knowledge - that is the necessity, doctor." 

It was without warning that Jackson stepped towards up - stepped practically against him - stepped close enough that he could smell the juniper on the man's breath. 

"Then it is my medical advice, Inspector, that you learn to turn the hell off." 

 

It wasn't so much a feeling as a realization that Jackson's hand was on his chest, resting somewhere in the vicinity of his collarbones. Reid looked down at it, acknowledged it, and felt the equal measures of shock and steadiness. 

He looked up, caught Jackson's gaze, and couldn't help but flush in the moment. 

How long? How many long years had it been since he'd been regarded thus - there was no mistaking the expression - and been so close to another person in the spirit of anything but a physical altercation? 

He didn't like to think of the number. Knew all too well what it signified. 

And yet, here he was. He couldn't say if this was Jackson's intent. He didn't know much if he cared. 

And then Jackson pressed closer, and the intent was obvious. 

Reid didn't have any truck with the laws of any God, but he knew all too well of what Earthly laws had to say on the matter. 

And yet, he made no move to stop the first kiss, the slow press of their lips, the needy hum that sang up in his throat. 

It was physical starvation, nothing more. No need to acknowledge how he'd caught himself staring when Jackson worked in the lab, sleeves pushed up, expression focused all too perfectly for once. 

There was too much of that focus in Jackson's expression now, as he pulled back, as he fixed his gaze on Reid's mouth, his hand dragging up from Reid's chest to settle against his jaw. 

"I could arrest you for this," Reid whispered. "We could both hang." 

"Sure. Sure we will," Jackson whispered back, letting out an almost-taunting chuckle as he leaned back in. 

Reid couldn't say how long he'd had his hands at his sides, palms flat against the brick behind him. 

He was aware of moving them, finally, when he opened his mouth against Jackson's relentless kiss, of his fingertips scraping the rough surface as he moved to grip at the man's shoulders. 

The doctor's hands were at his flies, trying to slide inside, and Reid finally wrenched away. 

Think of his vows. Think of Emily. Think of his hopes for his old life, of the duties of his job…  

The world spun, and he was emptying his stomach all over the pavement. 

**Author's Note:**

> So, I wrote this when I was only about halfway-or-so through watching season one, and found that as I progressed, I was less and less able to come up with anything further than "a few weeks later, they probably went all the way." Jackson was probably more entertained than anything about how the night ended. 
> 
> (tl;dr: I don't think I have any way of continuing this, but I'm super happy with how it turned out.)
> 
> I may not be active in this particular fandom, but I can always be found [here on tumblr](http://hoverboardbandit.tumblr.com).


End file.
